And the rate likely will rise with Thursday's announcement that the Sitel call center in Port Arthur will close in late August. About 400 people will be out of work as a result.

Large industrial projects have been scaled back, but public construction projects, including city community centers and Beaumont Housing Authority apartment complexes, are under way.

And new hotels are under construction. By early next year, Beaumont could have 3,800 rooms available.

Michael A. Smith, 55, would love to work at one of those construction sites, but said he can't get hired.

At the Workforce Solutions Southeast Texas center in Beaumont this week, Smith was searching for work as a carpenter. He most recently had tried for work at the school-bond construction sites and at the housing authority's new Pointe North on Magnolia Avenue.

"I'm very frustrated," he said. "It's our tax dollars. They won't give us any contracts."

He said he's been able to get work through temporary staffing agencies, but the work is neither steady nor well-paying.

"I have framing skills. I read blueprints," he said. "I can pass a drug test. I have no felonies."

John Bronson, 31, of Vidor also pored through available jobs on a computer screen at the workforce center at 304 Pearl St.

"I've worked in plants. I've tended bar. I've been doing odds and ends to survive," he said.

Asked what kind of work he was looking for, Bronson said, "To be perfectly honest, I'm not picky."

A recent poll shows plenty of Texans are worried.

The private, nonpartisan Texas Lyceum Poll, released this week, said state residents overwhelmingly believe the economy is the most important issue facing the country and expect gloomy conditions to get worse.

More than two-thirds of Texans don't have confidence in the stock market and almost half are not very confident about the safety of their retirement funds. Almost a third of respondents have stopped putting money in their own retirement accounts and about one in five have moved retirement money into less risky investments.

Many have put off education plans or the purchase of a car, the poll said.

But in Southeast Texas, spending has been up, according to recent sales tax figures.

In Beaumont, commercial real estate broker Charlie Foxworth noted in his first electronic newsletter released Wednesday that the recent sales tax report "is a good economic indicator" in spite of the "wait-and-see mode" in the overall commercial real estate market.

"We are seeing an increase in sales tax revenues in the areas affected by Hurricane Ike," Foxworth said.

"The increase in sales tax revenue has been somewhat steady since Hurricane Rita in 2005. There have been some seasonal ups and downs, but the year-to-year numbers have looked very good.

"Because it is a good economic indicator, you may have seen that retail outlets such as CVS, Sonic, Chick-Fil-A, Buffalo Wild Wings, Jack in the Box and Ritter At Home are continuing to make investments in Southeast Texas," Foxworth said.

He said national companies are feeling a "mild" impact from the global recession, and cited pullbacks by local refineries in expansion projects, like Valero Energy Corp.'s indefinite postponement of its $1.6 billion hydrocracker project and Motiva Enterprises' slowdown in its $7 billion expansion.